Five rock engravings that experts believe to be prehistoric have been discovered on the banks of the Guadiana River in Elvas after the water level dropped due to the continuing drought.The discoveries will be analysed by the Regional Directorate of Culture of the Alentejo which already has planned for experts to travel to the various locations to study the engravings, found last week.
The archaeologists say the rock art is from the post-Paleolithic era, "I would say that there is a strong probability of these being prehistoric figures and that, while they are visible, the opportunity should be taken to send in a team of rock art experts," said the president of the Association of Portuguese Archaeologists, José Morais Arnaud.
The engravings were found last week on the Portuguese bank of the Guadiana by a Spanish former soldier, Joaquin Larios Cuello. He was in the Ajuda bridge area, near the town of Elvas, Portalegre.
The historian Luís Lobato de Faria, who has been to see the engraved stones, said that the work appear to be "thousands of years old and the figures resemble the shape of serpents and human figures.”
"We have already selected some of the engravings for safeguarding," said the historian, recalling that in 2001 a survey of rock art engravings was made in the same area.
The first rock art engravings found in the Guadiana area were discovered in the 1970s in the Pulo do Lobo area, in the municipality of Mértola and then, in 2001 and 2002, more findings were recorded during construction of the Alqueva dam.
At that time, engravings representing animals and geometric figures were identified, running along a strip that extends for more than ten kilometers in the Alandroal, Évora.
We discovered hundreds of figures, over many kilometers, in the area of the Alqueva Dam. The main area, the one with the most engravings, is called Mulenhola," said the head of the research Alqueva rock art research project, António Martinho Batista.
"Some of the engravings that were discovered in the Spanish part at that time were paleolithic. In the Portuguese part, most were postglacial engravings," said Batista, adding the these new finds may belong to the period between the Neolithic and the Chalcolithic.
